


No 4th Walls Shall Stand ft. Gerry and Michael

by JayBarou



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Other, kind of, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27106855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBarou/pseuds/JayBarou
Summary: Gerry is a terrible influence and keeps egging his liefriend to break the Archivist’s mind further.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	No 4th Walls Shall Stand ft. Gerry and Michael

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery warnings at the end.

Jonathan crossed the door and found himself in the kitchen. He didn’t remember why he had gone to the kitchen in the first place. He looked around. It was not lunch time, he wasn’t hungry... His eyes caught the knife rack.

It wasn’t the reason he had come, but he could make use of the trip. He pulled out several knives and counted the inches of each one. He already knew how many inches there were from the spine to the sternum, he only wanted to know if the point of the knife would show through the front.

He walked out and back to his computer, he went past a mirror that didn't look like him but before he could wonder what that was about something else made him stop dead in his tracks; there were two people sitting on an armchair by his computer. One sitting propperly, the other perched on the back. One of them was watching him, watching intently, the other was... there? Just existing _there_? He didn’t know which one was which. Had he owned an armchair before? _That_ armchair? 

And... Had he... had he let them in and forgotten about them? His guests? Maybe that was why he had been to the kitchen, for refreshments. That had to be it, but he hadn’t brought them back!

“Don’t mind us!” Said... one of them. He knew they looked very different but at the same time, he couldn’t tell them apart. “Go on.”

And he went on. Banyan Court wouldn’t become a crime scene on its own. He sat in front of the computer and wrote how the guests found Tobias Fell’s body. He was so lost in the story that he forgot he was not alone. He should sleep, but his editor would call in the morning and he didn’t have enough written.

“This is... not that different from an archivist. You are losing your touch.”

Jonathan startled. He had forgotten their presence again. Even the feeling of being watched had faded. They were looking at each other and there was something shared there. He was good with faces, so why couldn’t he tell what their shared look was? A challenge? Or, or just complicit amusement?

“What do you want?”

“I’d say surprise me, but I’m already surprised, I’m just not... entertained.”

“Something... could be done.”

Once again he was the focus of their attention. He didn’t like it.

“Would you be a d-”

“No,” he snapped, turning to his draft again. “The deadline is too close and this is...”

“You will need another cup of tea,” the other suggested.

He looked up, there was a hoard of empty tea mugs and a cold one. Had he drunk all of them?

“I’m sure Martin will-”

“Oh, _now_ you remember Martin?” one said.

“Who’s Martin?” the other overlapped.

“Martin is... Ale... No, that’s not right.” He pinched his nose with a sudden migraine, minding glasses that...weren’t there.

“You should get your own tea.”

“I... guess?”

He picked up a couple of empty mugs in each hand and crossed again the door to the kitchen. His fingers itched, he really wanted to squeeze the trigger. But he wouldn’t until it was over, probably.

“Oi! Any problem?”

They had heard promising rumours about a train, but for now, and until Nastya was done with the Aurora, they were stuck in a backwater planet with more sand than air and not enough explosions by far. They found themselves having to amuse the locals for a living. Pretty dull locals at that. Great.

“I _said:_ Any problem D’Ville?” Ashes stepped closer. Her itchy trigger finger was possibly even worse than his.

“Nah, guess not.”

He put both guns back in their leather holsters and felt strangely bad for dropping mugs for some unfathomable reason. He wasn’t sure why he had taken the guns out in the first place. After all, the Aurora had met quite a few eldritch beings, far less mundane than the two who seemed to be stalking them from the crowd.

“Fine, let’s make these idiots hand out some coin before the sandstorm." He clapped. "I don’t want any problems I can’t punch in the face.”

“I thought... we were going to raid them later?” Ivy asked.

“Then let’s make a show worth being raided!”

“I’m sure they will recommend us to their friends.”

“What friends? They don’t have a space port, not even a highway, raiding them will be the highlight of their month.”

Johnny smirked into his microphone, which was... on. He was used to things recording around him, right? Was he? Then why the feeling of... He looked up. The crowd was looking back, they didn’t look willing to depart with their coin after what they had just heard. A few were going for their own holsters. He could almost already taste the fight in their eyes.

But the stage had been a bitch to set up for it to be for nothing, and it was annoying when they had to clean blood from it, so he doubled down a la D'Ville. **  
**

“Right, idiots?" He adressed the crowd. "What primitive amusements do you even have here?” He felt his crew behind him tensing too, realizing the microphones had been open all along and waiting. More likely than not waiting for shit to hit the propulsors. What a bunch of untrusting bastards. “Have you heard about throwing horseshoes at a stick, _sorry,_ creatures-from-the-void-shoes at a stick or is that too modern for you?”

There was a confused silence from their audience and his crew at the same time. Someone in the audience huffed a laugh, he could work with that.

“I don’t know, these ones might not be worth raiding.” He turned to Tim. Stoker? No, Tim. “Look at them! Look at their vacant eyes. They look so painfully stupid...”

The laugh spread a bit more and soon they were all enjoying the insults enough to let them start with the music. He was so going to enjoy raiding them later.

But before the raiding and right after the concert, there was the tedious task of taking their shit back to the ship. Nobody wanted a repeat of Yurian VI, and as everyone had already experienced, cleaning blood from their equipment was only comparable to being persued by space piranhas for not having cleaned them.

He was unplugging wires, pulling from the cord because he had been told not to, when the two weird eldritch things spoke loud enough for him to hear. It was strange; he shouldn’t have been able to hear them over the dispersing chatter, but their conversation seemed to be more real than the rest of the noise. 

“... although the music was a nice touch. We should break him in this direction next time. Can we do that? Do something twice?”

His companion shrugged like it didn’t know either. “You... were entertained.”

“You are damn right I was. I still think this is not your best work.”

“Maybe.”

They turned to look at him. Damn, caught spying. Again. He stood. He had the whatever-box in his hands, fragile. Someone on the crew would come to kill him if he dropped it, so he couldn’t go for his guns. He smiled a disarming smile, or what he thought was a disarming smile, and walked backwards away from them, already figuring out which excuse would save his arse for a while. If he could only reach the door to the ship’s cargo hold... it was so close... a few feet more... The glare of the sun was bad enough to bother him, which shouldn’t have been able to bother _his_ eyes. It made him stumble into the cargo hold. He looked at the sky and the spotlight blinded him again. Who had been in charge of the lights? None should be shining on his face in that angle.

Rachel was already offering him a hand to pull him up. Fortunately there were very few fans who had seen him fall.

“Tonight was a good one,” Ivy said while she took the box he had been carrying.

“Whatever you say.” He jumped from the stage to turn off the annoying spotlight.

“Wow, you are cranky,” she threw over her shoulder.

“I just need a fag.”

“This is mostly done, go have that disgusting thing,” Kofi shouted from behind an amplifier.

“Thanks, Kof.”

He was all too happy to trot out of the front door before someone could suggest he should wait until they were done. There were still some people bustling around, but he noticed the two particular figures who followed him out. It was not unusual to have a somewhat stalkerish fan follow them for a chat or an autograph, or, not that one please, _advice._ He didn’t like the odds of two to one today though, and these ones were dressed weird.

He was spared the unwanted advice for the moment, as one of them took out his own cigarettes and a lighter out. He offered to lit his after he did his own. Still, no chatter.

“Thanks,” Jonathan said with the butt still on his mouth. Hadn’t he...? Hadn’t he stopped smoking already? But half of his packet was gone, so he must have smoked those too.

The one to offer his lighter was... he wanted to say a goth. Punk? Emo even... It seemed to... change depending on the angle from where he saw the guy. The other was even harder to pin down. Their fans were usually very meticulous about their wardrobe choices, which meant that the two weren’t all that strange in the clothing department. It was something in their attitude, then. Their demeanour was not that of a fan, it was far more predatory. 

They seemed to be just observing. Observing him? Waiting?

“What is this about, really?” Raven stranger turned to rainbow stranger. “It feels like fodder, it is not like you at all. What are you planning?”

“I don’t make plans!” Rainbow stranger answered with an offended moue.

“Go tell that to someone who still believes you.”

“Is this... not enough for you?”

“It is just not like _you_. I like the twist, I guess, but this feels like a step down from _actual space bardic pirates.”_

_“Yes...”_

Johnny had had enough weirdness for a night. He still had a drag or two left but he stomped the butt on the wall and threw it to the designated butts corner. He rushed back in, but not fast enough to avoid being stared at while he crossed the door.

His coat and his things were right there with the others' stuff, they were done for the day and maybe for a long time. Dragging his laptop to the pub wouldn’t be fun, but Alex had impulse-invited everyone present to celebrate the successful recording of the last episode and he wasn't about to miss out on that.

“Hey, man,” Martyn approached him. “I got your new book in the mail today. Did you remember to keep your timeline straight this time?”

“Fuck you!” he said with a smile on his face that he immediately covered with his face mask.

“He can’t, he can’t make anything straight, haven’t you heard?” Ben elbowed him.

They laughed and trickled to the hall of the studio. Their little team; someone had called them the Magnus Family, which had prompted Ben to call himself the Patriarch and everything had been a blood feud since then. But... there were two unfamiliar faces -and at the same time perfectly familiar- with them at the hall. Two audio technicians, he assumed, who seemed to have come in costumes. He knew almost everyone at Rusty Quill, but not them. Although, maybe they were good make-up artists and he did know them? Whatever they were, they were creeping him out; especially because they looked exactly the way they would if someone had plucked them straight from his mind.

“Oh, bloody hell,” said Imogen covering their facemask with their hand.

“What, what is it?”

“We can’t go to any pub, there is too many of us.”

He did a headcount. Indeed, far too many.

“Right you are, come to mine to celebrate? I have enough alcohol for a party!” Mike offered.

“Isn’t that forbidden too? We could split up at the pub and sit in different tables.”

“Sure...” Sasha put her arms akimbo. “Since we are at it, let’s just go pubs in the opposite side of the street. I’ll shout ‘Marco’ from ours.”

“...Polo.” Everyone stared. Alex shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Let’s go out and decide on the way.”

Which meant they were going to the pub, but didn’t know yet how to deal with the restrictions. And as everyone paired off to talk and keep some distance, he had space to think about things he had put on hold. The two unknown guys in disguise walked past him, 6 feet ahead. Within hearing distance, but he wasn’t paying attention.

“You are looking... Are you okay?” Sasha walked by his side, a little apart from the rest.

“I don’t know. It’s over, you know? Really over. I guess I was not ready for it to end.”

Sasha put an arm around his middle and squeezed. The fabric of their coats rustled and his mood improved immediately. The last year had conditioned him thoroughly; maybe it would wear off, but he wasn’t in a rush. 

He wondered how people would react to season 5 being over. He was genuinely curious, even now, knowing exactly how he was going to go through the Apocalyps- How HIS CHARACTER was going to go through hell... The name thing was really fucking with his head... what if it was really hurting some part of his psyche. How would he explain to a therapist that he was sharing his headspace with a fictional piece of himself? Maybe he was finally losing it. Many people had joked about it, but maybe ha was really _really_ losing it. Maybe

“That’s more like it,” he heard the one clearly disguised as Gerard Keay say over the noise of his thoughts. “The others lacked fear.”

“Are you not going to question it?” the one in a Michael cosplay answered back.

“Question what?”

“If you are real or just a character.”

He blinked. Were they really _that_ in character? Had they inadvertently let a couple of fans follow them?

“Do you think I would survive dating you if I lingered in thoughts like that?”

The taller of the two leaned to the side and brought them together. He knew they were kissing. But... he didn’t see it, with his eyes, he... their faces were not... and then they... they were looking back at him, just a moment. He looked at Sasha to check if she was as unsettled as he, but she was looking ahead without a care in the world, content.

“I think I can make it worse,” Michael laughed, and he was sure it was Michael because he Knew... no, that was wrong. This wasn’t his fiction, but that _was_ Michael. No amount of make-up could do what it was doing with its face. Then could he Know? No. No. He was just tired, or dreaming? Everything felt perfectly real except them, but... No, he couldn’t think this was exactly the kind of game the Spiral would play, because that way madness lies, and madness meant it had won. No, no, it didn’t win because it didn’t exist.

Full stop.

...But at least he had to admit there was something wrong with his head. It was the name thing. He was really going to have to find help. Was it even the first time it happened? It was not the first time he played a character with his name and it hadn’t been that confusing back when he played with Basira and... No... That was wrong, right? He never played with Basira... with Ash- With the band.

Maybe it had been the music. The music kept it firmly tied to the fiction of it all. They had had so much fun with all the violence, adventure, violence... violence...

It could have been a statement, there had been one, right? He had recorded a statement of a band, and violence... No, but- He had _written_ an episode with a violent band. No, no no, what he had written was... about Tobias Fell at the attic of Banyan Court... or... maybe... maybe he had originally written it for an episode. He had used the idea he read on a statement, on a...

He went to rub his eyes, minding glasses that weren’t there... twice? Why was he so sure he had made the same mistake recently? He had been... The day with the knives... Had he written that or...?

“Oh, that is excellent.”

He didn’t know anymore where the voices came from.

“I’m hearing the ‘but’ in the ringing of my ears.”

“Hm. I was thinking about a collaboration.”

“You think you could turn the eye on him?”

He shrugged.

“Let’s try? I think it is pissed enough with him to do it.”

“Can we eat him, then?”

“Let’s stay just shy of permanent damage, ok? Where are we going to find such a resistant chew toy otherwise?”

Jon was afraid of those words, of the playful tone, but he was even more afraid of how he didn’t know if he was Jon, John, or even Johnny perhaps. He could feel himself not being himself so deeply. Any of those identities felt far more real than the one he currently occupied. He, he? he (for now) felt observed, but not in a dispassionate way. He felt he was being observed with a voracious intent, being twisted, split in a thousand versions of himself. He felt move in ways he wouldn’t have moved. He felt the way he imagined the web would feel if he didn’t know the web was virtually impossible to feel. He felt... he felt like a deviation of himself, like a fiction of himself, like a fiction of someone who didn’t know him, like a fiction of a fan, he felt like he was made of words. A letter after a letter, he didn’t feel his body, and he felt seen. Worse, he felt read, he felt curious eyes, not of the Ceaseless watcher, but tired eyes that should be sleeping wondering if it was going to go _there_. He didn’t understand where “there” was, but the eyes crinkled. You scrolled down the screen. The unreality of his existence caught up with him and the meaningless train of his thought went through a tunnel painted in the walls. I wrote the next line. His mind couldn’t wrap around the truth, it felt like a vision, a cruel knowledge from the eye, but one he couldn’t fully-

There was a cough. Polite, but very much angry.

And the tapping of a foot.

Everyone’s attention turned to Martin.

Reality coalesced around them into a room with congruent chairs. Safe. Life snapped into place all around Martin and outwards.

“Are you done? Seriously! You are like children, I leave for a moment...”

“He forgot!” Gerry said, too lout to be indoors. 

“He’ll make it up to me.”

“He should know better than leaving you alone today.” Gerry crossed his arms, refusing the apology Marting was clearly fishing for.

“I wasn’t alone, you dropped for a visit, right?”

“That... might not be the point.” Michael tried to keep stable while it talked. Martin was thankful for it.

“Are you two still up for dinner on Thursday?” Jon asked to help them out of a Martin scolding, which could be terrifying.

“I’m surrounded by children!” Martin huffed and sat by Jon’s side.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Gerry showed the hint of a rare smile and looked at Michael, who was nodding back. 

Jon would have never pegged them as a good couple, but time had proven him wrong again. In a matter of minutes, Martin was talking animatedly with them. He would want some kind of apology, but they were their friends, and forgiveness was easy lately when friends were involved. _Friends_ , who would have thought? Gerry had found common ground in bad parenting experiences, Michael had already seen a kindred soul in the fidgety assistant tied to what he saw as a cruel Archivist. Things had not developed the same way as with Gertrude and Michael had reluctantly had to admit that Jon was not the same kind of ruthless as the previous archivist at all. Both had become fiercely protective of Martin, of the two of them, in fact. And Jon was kind of thankful for it. 

Martin finally turned from saying his godbyes to the yellow door with a complex but strong emotion on his face and Jon fell all over for that caring man, like every morning. Angry, worried, some leftover politeness... Mostly anger. 

“You can’t blame them,” Jon placated. “I asked them to let me know if I was slipping, hurting people with action _or_ inaction.”

“I still think they took to the task with too much glee,” he spat petulantly.

“Hmm... What did I forget, by the way? It is not our anniversary.”

“They didn’t mention...? It is not important.”

“You scared them off too soon, I guess. What day is it today?” He turned to the calendar. “It’s... Oh. Sorry. They are right, I should have known better.”

“No, they... Maybe a little. But I don’t want my mum to have any relevance in our calendar, you know?”

“Right, right. But it has been barely a year since the funeral, it must be still raw.”

“I don’t want to think about her.”

Jon went to hug Martin. Even if he didn't want to think about her, he would. He tried to think of something else to take Martin's mind from the lonely thoughts.

“Should I tell you what those two thought was an appropriate punishment?” Jon said still into Martin's shoulder.

“A little schadenfreude? As a treat?”

“That meme is so old, love.”

“Just enough to have the charm of nostalgia. Come on, tell me what they put you through this time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:  
> The Mechanisms are used, but only as part of a spiral delusion, so I didn't tag them sepparately. In the same vein, real people are mentioned, but not enough to be a RPF.


End file.
